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Monday, August 29, 2016

1 Week Until Nationals

With one week to go until we leave for Lincoln, we're tearing through our final to-do list.

First up was switching from the more aggressive brake pads we put on a month ago back to the Mazda pads. Overall they have more feel and gave us more control that the track pads that need a lot of heat to work well. It started out as a simple job until we found a stripped bolt on one of the front calipers. We'll reach out to Panic Motorsports for a replacement and wrap this job up later this week.

Over at Jason's place working on brakes and wheels.

While I tackled brakes and let the car cool down, Jason is working away refurbishing a set of ultra-light weight wheels we're borrowing just for nationals. We'll show some pictures when they're all ready to go.

Getting to the troublesome AC parts involved a front bumper removal.

The second job we dove into was replacing the failing A/C compressor, flushing out the system and getting our frosty air back. The compressor swap went as planned, however when flushing the system we found out the accumulator was failing and leaking little desiccant BBs, so $20 on Amazon will have us a new one in a couple days and we'll finish that later on too!

You can see the desiccant that's been ejected while we had the lines disconnected.

The 1 week to go to-do list:

Replace the A/C compressor and re-charge the system (MORE parts on order)

Replace brake pads and rotors Replace a caliper

Cut and apply some additional vinyl (numbers, class letters)

Finish painting the trunk lid

Mount fresh tires

We'll check in on Friday with our final progress on the car before we head out and hopefully have time for a photo shoot with the final graphics and new wheels.